Indie Vroom: Super World Karts

I’ve been known to indignantly ask myself “Why hasn’t someone done an indie crossover kart racer?” every seven seconds. This has been going on for several years and it’s becoming a little annoying for friends, family and colleagues. Well thank goodness for Paul Hamilton (under the guise of excellently named solo studio One Legged Seagull Games) and his brainchild Super World Karts. It’s a SNES-styled karting game with a cast of both original and guest characters, currently on Kickstarter and looking for $16,000 AUD or just shy of £9,000.

Obviously an homage to Nintendo, let’s hope the game doesn’t stray too close to the copyright barrier. When discussing Team Indie, a karting game seemed the natural fit for a similar idea. Here’s the full list of guests which have been announced so far:

Mutt from Lobodestroyo

Turing from Read Only Memories

Tim Burr from Fist Of Awesome

Elena from Whispering Willows

Filo from So Many Me

the guys from Toto Temple Deluxe

Duck from Duck Game

A.R.E.S. from A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda

The Runner from Canabalt

Bart & Clu from Aegis Defenders

And there’s still more to come. Paul’s trying to preserve the various disparate art styles of these games in the characters he’s porting. The Runner looks particularly sweet, but I’d recommend checking out the individual updates for shots of each.

The release is currently scheduled for March 2015 but we should all know by now that a Kickstarter usually means these things are in flux. The get-the-game tier is around £5.59 and you can accelerate its Greenlight progress, if you so desire. For a bit of history, here’s the game’s first attempt at funding from late last year. It seems to have been doing okay once it got its engine going but ran out of time before crossing the finish line. The cancellation post is backers-only, which is a shame since they’re usually pretty interesting post-mortems. Meanwhile, here’s Paul’s previous games.